Liz Jobey went to see Andreas Gursky before his retrospective opened at Hayward Gallery to ask him about the effect of his market success—his work has set the record for a photographic work of art several different times—on the development of his work:

On my way to meet Gursky, I wondered if all the fuss around that sale had been an obstacle to his progress; whether the market pressure made it hard to move on. Monika Sprüth, his dealer, told me that in the weeks after the auction she’d instructed her staff to avoid speaking about it to journalists. “I mean, the moment your work is not discussed because of its ideas or its content . . . If you are constantly the artist who is the most expensive photographer all the time . . . There are some artists who probably like it, like Damien Hirst. But Andreas wasn’t prepared, and it was pressure, yes, and it is still a pressure today, in a way.”

Jobey’s mini-profile is a useful recap of Gursky’s own career and the market surge of his fellow Dusseldorf School photography-based artists—Thomas Struth, Axel Hütte, Thomas Ruff and Candida Höfer—who studied under Bernd and Hilla Becher. It also offers insight into Gursky’s career evolution since the financial success. “The whole market situation was a topic that might have been important to me [once],” he says. “What matters is now, and the fact that I made some money back then is what permits me to be completely free and independent in my work now.”

“Next year I have a sabbatical, so I don’t teach, I’m not doing any exhibitions for two years and I can do what I want. So: no emails, nothing. This is a huge privilege, I know. But I am going to do my own work. For me. Not for the market. Not for exhibitions. For me. I have done this for 30 years now, and I really need a break.”

Andreas Gursky: ‘The perfect image is not something that can be taught’ (Financial Times)